1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information display device, an information display system, and computer program product for information display.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, basic software, necessarily included in an operating system (OS) of a personal computer (PC) serving as an information display device, has a retrieval function; and when the function is activated, an input area for inputting an input condition for the retrieval or the like is displayed on a display screen of the PC. When a user inputs a predetermined keyword through the input area, the keyword is compared with a file name or a keyword stored in the PC by the retrieval function; and a retrieval result is displayed on the screen of the PC in a list form such as a list.
On the screen of the retrieval result, a view of a list form is typically displayed as the retrieval result. As a display form, there may be used various forms such as display starting from a file name, display starting from a file size, or display of file storage information.
For example, disclosed is a technique of performing the retrieval by narrowing down a retrieval target to one or more according to an input retrieval condition so as to display a retrieval result on a screen (for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2006-258441).
However, the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2006-258441 or the retrieval function of the basic software necessarily included in the OS of the PC deals with, for example, installed basic file formats, forms, or names. For this reason, since it is difficult to variably display the retrieval result according to the input retrieval condition and the user's operation, there has been a problem in view of visibility.
Further, in order to obtain a desired retrieval result, the user needs perform the retrieval many times while changing the retrieval conditions and check display of the updated retrieval result at each time; and thus operability and efficiency of the retrieval work have been poor. In addition, since the user is difficult to survey the amount of data or the distribution of data of an entire category to which a retrieval target image belongs, the user is difficult to grasp which portion of the entire category has to be retrieved and to what extent the retrieval has to be performed, and thus efficiency of the retrieval work has been poor.